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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Web Host Netregistry Hit by DDoS Attack

WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) --Australian web host NetRegistry (www.netregistry.au) was hit by a DDoS attack on Monday, according to a report by ZDNet Australia.

This attack comes a few months after it acquired the customers and assets of Australian web host Distribute.IT, the web host attacked by hacker group Evil in June.

According to the report, the attack started at 10:30 am and affected its customers using shared and virtual private server hosting. Approximately 100,000 customers were likely to have been affected by the disruption, according to Netregistry CEO Brett Fenton.

Fenton says Netregistry itself was not the intended target, but it isn't sure which hosting customer the attack was directed at. According to the report, Netregistry had to fend off a similar DDoS attack last year when its customer the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft was targeted by Anonymous.

Around 10:45 am, Netregistry announced its phone system was overloaded and had to place a limit on the number of calls it could accept. Around this time, the company confirmed it was experiencing a DDoS attack, and began to re-divert its network bandwidth and work with its upstream provider Telstra to stem the flow of traffic.

A report by iTechReport says that by lunchtime, the company believed it had resolved the issue, but the attack restarted around 2pm bringing the hosted sites offline again.

Netregistry says by 5pm access had been restored for most customers except for those using a Telstra-provided internet connection. Access to sites on the Zeus Dynamic shared hosting infrastructure remains offline, according to the report.

The report says the outage impacted its resellers and subsidiaries like ZipHosting as well.